Alternatives to Incarceration: Community-Based Solutions for Offenders

This essay examines alternatives to incarceration, focusing on strategies to reduce youth delinquency and improve public safety. It highlights the economic and social benefits of shifting from traditional imprisonment to community-based programs. The essay discusses the overcrowding in juvenile detention facilities and the need for alternative solutions like home confinement, day treatment, and group homes. It explores how these alternatives can provide better opportunities for rehabilitation, education, and addressing chronic issues, while also holding offenders accountable and ensuring community safety. The paper references various studies and reports, emphasizing the positive impact of community-based programs in preventing recidivism and promoting positive outcomes for young offenders.

Running Head: ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
The underlying economic or historical cause behind the search for substitutes to
imprisoning offenders in the prisons and jails has established by the studies and examination to
reveal several strategies that are innovative save public funding. Furthermore enhance the health
of the public by maintaining non-violent, low risk, and the offenders who are involved of drug
crimes out of the jail or prison (Clark, Dolan & Farabee, 2017). Thus, in addition to this also
uphold the offenders liable and also guarantee the safety of the community. Thus it was observed
that approximately 93,000 of offenders are held facilities of juvenile justice throughout the
country of the United States (STROHMAIER & GALLOWAY, 2015). According to the
American Correctional Association, seventy per cent of youth offenders are detained in
residential, post-adjudication, state-funded facilities that are of the average cost of $ 240.99 per
youth per day. The necessity for alternatives to the system of incarceration involves crowding.
Furthermore, in between the year 1990 and 1999, the number of cases of delinquency engage
imprisonment that enhanced by 11 per cent (Wood, 2015). In addition to that, crowding can
cause dangerous state in the context of management of facility it is held to be unfavourable to
treatment and rehabilitation of the youth who are detained. Henceforth the logistical issues that
are intrinsic in the crowded state and the same raise violence. The young offenders who are
confined for longer duration do not have scope to partake in the structure that is intended to the
educational progress. The programme that is designed for treatment in the confinement
facilities is not intended to resolve chronic issues and also require intensive and sustained
interventions.

2ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
The alternatives to confinement and detention are the initiatives that are adopted for
preventing youth offenders from secure confinement or detention facilities whereby other
options of treatment, sanctions that are community-based and residential settlement are
considered to be proper. The alternatives methods to incarceration can be implicated by court
officers, police, prosecutors or judges (Crichlow & Joseph, 2015). Therefore there are several
substitutes to the process of confinement or detention. House arrest or home confinement is the
programme that is community-based, which is designated to limit the actions of youth offenders
in the community that can implicate both post and pre-adjudication. The procedure of home
confinement allows the youth offenders to live in home attend work or school; however, there
are monitors closely for guaranteeing that they carry out the conditions that are set out by
adjudicating authority.
Evening or Day treatment is another substitute to incarceration that is community-based
is nonresidential, high structured that facilitates rigorous supervision to youth offenders (Bagaric,
Hunter & Wolf, 2018). In this particular method, it is required that youth offenders made the
report to the facility of treatment at a specific time on a daily basis; however, they are not
permitted to coming back home in the night. Group home is a method by which the youth
offenders are permitted wide interaction with the community. The intensive program of
supervision is the alternative to incarceration that is nonresidential and provides high grade of
dominion to youth offenders for the purpose of ensuring safety to the public. It is discovered by
Winokur Early that the juvenile takes part in Amikids day treatment facilities that are
community-based less probable in comparison to control group to get convicted or adjudicated
for a crime within the period of twelve months from the date of release.

3ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
However, the significant individual or societal advantage of commanding punishment or
sanctions that do not engage removing the youth offender from the community or family is the
major footstep in proper direction thus the system of criminal justice undergo settling the
concerns relating to juvenile delinquency.

4ALTERNATIVES TO INCARCERATION
Reference
Bagaric, M., Hunter, D., & Wolf, G. (2018). Technological incarceration and the end of the
prison crisis. J. Crim. L. & Criminology, 108, 73.
Clark, N., Dolan, K., & Farabee, D. (2017). Public health alternatives to incarceration for drug
offenders. Eastern Mediterranean Health Journal, 23(3).
Crichlow, W., & Joseph, J. (Eds.). (2015). Alternative Offender Rehabilitation and Social
Justice: Arts and Physical Engagement in Criminal Justice and Community Settings.
Springer.
STROHMAIER, H., & GALLOWAY, M. (2015). The movement toward community-based
alternatives to criminal justice involvement and incarceration for people with severe
mental illness. The Sequential Intercept Model and criminal justice: Promoting
community alternatives for individuals with serious mental illness, 1.
Wood, W. R. (2015). Why restorative justice will not reduce incarceration. British Journal of
Criminology, 55(5), 883-900.